The present invention relates generally to web-server traffic data analysis and more particularly to a system and method for determining the value of visitors to a web site.
The worldwide web (hereinafter “web”) is rapidly becoming one of the most important publishing mediums today. The reason is simple: web servers interconnected via the Internet provide access to a potentially worldwide audience with a minimal investment in time and resources in building a web site. The web server makes available for retrieval and posting a wide range of media in a variety of formats, including audio, video and traditional text and graphics. And the ease of creating a web site makes reaching this worldwide audience a reality for all types of visitors, from corporations, to startup companies, to organizations and individuals.
This recent growth of the Internet over the past few years has opened new markets for business. Individuals use the Internet for everything from buying new cars to ordering a pizza to hiring a plumber. The ease with which people can use the Internet for such activities has spurred businesses to offer the services and products people desire on the Internet.
Unlike other forms of media, a web site is interactive, and the web server can passively gather access information about each visitor by observing and logging the traffic data exchanged between the web server and the visitor. Important facts about the visitors can be determined directly or inferentially by analyzing the traffic data and the context of the “hit.” Moreover, traffic data collected over a period of time can yield statistical information, such as the number of visitors visiting the site each day, what countries, states or cities the visitors connect from, and the most active day or hour of the week. Such statistical information is useful in tailoring marketing or managerial strategies to better match the apparent needs of the audience. Each hit is also encoded with the date and time of the access.
Visitors to a web site are not of uniform interest to the site operator. For example, a relatively low quality visitor might be one that merely reads the home page of the site and moves on. A higher quality visitor might be one that locates, e.g., a product description page, and an even higher quality visitor might be one who visits the price page. The highest quality visitor is, of course, one that orders and pays for goods or services offered by the web site.
Visitors may be induced to visit a web site via advertisements placed on remote web sites. One common way to advertise on the Internet is with banner ads. A banner ad shows a picture or statement of a business's products and services and allows a visitor to click on the ad to visit the web site hosted by the business. The visit may be to obtain more information, or, as is hoped by the business, to effect a purchase of a product or service via the web site.
The problem with Internet advertising is measuring its effectiveness. Internet advertising campaigns vary in price, depending on several factors such as where the ad is to be placed and the expected viewing population. One advertising campaign might cost a business, for example, $1,000.00 to be on display for one month at one site, whereas the same ad might cost only $500.00 at another site. Further, it has been difficult to determine exactly how many visitors an advertising campaign generated. In the above example, the $500.00 advertising campaign might have generated 10,000 visits in the month the ad was up, whereas the $1,000.00 advertising campaign might have generated only 7,000 visits a month. Finally, the value an advertising campaign generates is a function of what happens after the visitors visit the site. In the above example, although the $500.00 advertising campaign generated more hits, if none of those visitors made any purchase of the business's products or services, their collective value would be close to $0.00. On the other hand, although the $1,000.00 advertising campaign generated fewer hits, those visitors might all have purchased products or services, making their collective value at least several hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is this difficulty in gauging the effectiveness of advertising campaigns that makes their use a gamble. Accordingly, there remains a need for a way to analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns to determine their relative worth.
It would be desirable to analyze the information gathered by the web server to determine the quality of visitors to the web site.
It would also be desirable for the site operator to use the determined visitor quality to analyze the effectiveness of the operator's advertising.